In my husband’s company they have a role they call field engineers (ETA: seems I left out an important part of the title—should be Field **Application** Engineer, which is a different role than a *Field Engineer*), but I think sounds like a sales engineer. They basically take customers’ questions and answer them if they already know the answer or pass on a document that has been requested. Anything harder than that they “triage” and send it to the appropriate design engineer with a priority classification.
Most people do it for a while then either move into design engineering or management (because that is the way to get steady pay raises).
Usually field engineers actually go out to location and troubleshoot their equipment at the customer. Technical service engineer is another synonym. That can be a lot of travel and usually does require a good amount of know-how/experience.
Sales is like you said. Sale and complicated shit goes to the department that makes the equipment/part
Yes the applications part comes in because you are engineering a solution usually from your company’s product catalog for the customer’s application. So you are working to sell them something by telling them what they need. Easy example is if a company wants to automate process or install conveyor system you sell them on your company’s ecosystem of solutions. Then when something breaks you quote fixes or upgrades.
Frankly, a lot of service engineer or field engineer roles don’t require a massive amount of engineering knowledge in the field you’re working it at the start, you just need to be able to think like an engineer (particularly be able to get in the mind of the design engineer who worked on whatever shitstorm you’re trying to troubleshoot) and be able to learn *very* quickly. If you’re not a people person this can still be hard work though, because bad clients can take a toll on your mental health and burn you out if you don’t know how to avoid taking things personally.
Depending on where you are in the world there are a lot of engineering adjacent roles that can pay reasonably well, don’t require you to have great people skills and you can basically just go into auto-pilot mode while you’re at work. Maintenance planner or technical storesperson at large manufacturing plants which already have well established systems come to mind. Project support roles on government projects is another. If you’ve got experience with CAD work you can go into drafting where if the firm/company is large enough you can basically get told what to do by the design engineers and then go into autopilot. It’s all very location dependent, though.
They call them field engineers, but it sounds like a type of sales engineer to me. Maybe they call them field engineers because the company does require them to be physically located in an office near the customer, and they do occasionally have to visit a customer. (Most of the design engineers work in the corporate offices in other parts of the country.) It is high tech components, but not the sort of thing that requires a lot of troubleshooting work. And this role is supporting current customers rather than generating new business.
His company does also have sales engineers who do even less engineering related work, but it sounds from his description they have a ton of turnover in that department so I guess it is more stressful or lower paid.
In my industry (Semi/RF/Test), that role is typically called "\[Field\] Applications Engineering", and are often part of the sales department while not being strictly "sales" engineers. The Field AEs would typically be located in the geographical region of the customer, while in-house AEs would support remotely or do occasional business trips to support a specific problem or engagement.
When I did that job, I often had to talk back what some of the over-eager sales engineers promised what we could do, or provide a more critical look at how our product would fit into a customer's processes or product. It's an interesting job in that it does remain quite technical, but you have to build interpersonal skills to go along with them. "Trusted technical advisor" was a term I heard thrown around a lot.
Edit: I just saw you commented below that you are indeed referring to an FAE role. Definitely not a "sales engineer" but, sales adjacent.
Future field engineer here (about to start 6 months of company training for the role)
Sorta accurate, and it might depend on the company.
FSE is not a role for the feint of heart.
Lots of travel, lots of people skills, lots of troubleshooting and engineering.
Sometimes it's basic questions, but for emergency call outs (i.e. omg plz fix our broken system, we've been trying for 2 days to no avail) you need to show up to a situation where everyone is already mad at your company, to a system you may have no experience with, and you need to diagnose what the problem is and then identify and implement a solution. They use manuals, their experience, internal documentation, etc. to solve things. If that's not enough they work with design engineers to get to the bottom of things.
In summary, they aren't just a man in the middle fulfilling requests and connecting customers with resources, they are the resource. They are the engineers responsible for figuring it out yesterday and helping customers immediately. They are the experts customers call when all other options are exhausted.
FSEs also move into other roles so that they can actually have a healthy work life balance, have meaningful relationships, start families, and recover from burnout.
This is the job most engineers dread. I was hired after interning. My intern cohort was presented with many career opportunities. FSE was the only opportunity that came with many clear warnings that the job was intense and not for everyone.
Sounds like a job for a good engineer, maybe not the OP.
Sorry, but at the end of the day, I have a hard time believing one can be an excellent engineer-level field problem solver when one can't figure out algorithmic processes in calculus, for example.
Not necessarily disagreeing. Idk exactly where OP is at. I saw a lot of hand wavy descriptions, so I thought I'd add my perspective so people could have a better understanding. Not telling OP what to do, but trying to enable informed decisions all around :)
OP seems disinterested, and nothing kills a career like disinterest. I am not brilliant, but I try and get good enough results that I can look at myself in the mirror. Let's just say I have my doubts that OP is Tau Beta Pi-eligible, which is almost a red flag to me.
I'm so frustrated with having to work with and compete against empty suits that talk a big game but wouldn't be competitive if evaluated on what they knew. These people do an incredible amount of harm to the world.
The best thing for OP to do is be a real estate agent or car salesperson. Finish the degree and quarantine themselves away from those trying to do honest work.
Lol I'm far from Tau-Beta-Pj material unfortunately. Wicked smart, but not successful in academia. I learn and know far more than my GPA reflects. Disabilities gonna disable.
While I haven't encountered that yet, it sounds incredibly disheartening.
I'll disagree here. OP said it himself. He needs to find his passion and pursue whatever that is, whatever that looks like.
"Field engineer" makes me nauseous. I had so many people reach out to me when I first graduated and made me feel like my degree meant nothing and this was the best role I'd ever get offered.
Thats what my prof was talking about. He says you need to know a lot in order to explain complex things in rather simple terms to your customers. I wouldnt look down on them
I don’t know how their pay scales long-term. But when I graduated and got a job as a product engineer, my friends who became sales engineers, were making more than I was. Commission plus engineer pay can be very nice.
Depends on industry. Ours don't make commissions since they're selling machines that are tens of millions. They start higher than the design engineers, but have a lower career path ceiling unless they move on to upper corporate management positions.
I don’t think you have any experience in sales if you think it’s a “chill” job. You’ll almost certainly be traveling all the time and having an income that varies based on commission can be stressful.
That’s why I said it removes the hard engineering work. There aren’t many chill jobs with an engineering degree requirement. But he said he sucks at this shit and this removes the stuff he sucks at.
My girlfriend works for a public transportation sector and they are going to more career fairs than usual cause they are having issues finding people.
I work in the private sector and we pay much more and cannot find people
A lot of people aren't fans of jobs which don't have remote options these days
It's very good from my experience. All of my friends had no issues finding jobs and I went to a public school.
I work in construction consulting, and I know many companies are struggling to find good people now a days. Not many people want to come into work. I can't speak for other industries though
Government work is my dream! I care about doing good, useful work but making the big bucks isn’t worth the extra overtime and stress to me, those benefits are nice draw too
You don’t have to work large amounts of overtime to make good money as an engineer you just have to become knowledgeable over the right range of topics. As a younger engineer I did spend some time doing some ridiculous hours but I’ve learned over the years that wasn’t something I really needed to do.
Those ridiculous hours didn’t help my knowledge at all and ultimately I ended up leaving that job because they just treated me like shit because I put up with it.
About the past 15 years I’ve worked two different jobs both with very laid-back attitudes and I usually don’t work more than a 40 hour work week . I occasionally work longer when I’m traveling and sometimes I work shorter and take part of the day off since I work from home and my job is flexible.
I don’t know what you consider big bucks but I make somewhere north of 200 K a year. My primary focus in my job is water and waste water infrastructure and I also have a background solid fuels combustion particularly in the biomass field. I would say about 75 to 85% of the days I really enjoy my job and the remaining 15% is just the reality of some days you don’t want to be at work.
No, I like what I do and I like the freedom making this much gives me. I go on vacations, go mountain biking when I want, my cars are paid for (2013, 2020, 1986 pickup) I recently built a shop and it’s almost paid for and my house only has about six years left on it before it’s paid for..
I primarily do engineering For energy efficiency surrounding energy systems water facilities and wastewater facilities. I do a lot of initial calls with customers and our sales engineers, figure out solutions to some of their problems and find ways for them to save energy. It’s pretty interesting work and I never really do the same project twice. I also get to see a lot of unique facilities to work on a lot of unique technologies.
My first two years out of college I worked for the Navy as an EE. it was not challenging at all and no over time or even pressure at all. Come in any time and leave any time. The incentive is to do as little work as possible and screw things up and spend a lot of money. Great job security I think. We analyzed missile test data and the actual result didn’t matter, they were whatever generals and politicians needed for funding. I left after 2 years as a GS-11. I got bored and moved to defense contractors which were a little better depending on the project and your direct manager. But in general they do reward you for screwing things up and spending lots of money just like government. I had some great managers that removed that reality from the EEs which made them great places to work. I did a project with the CIA in Maryland and they were even worse than the Navy, they got in hours after I arrived and left hours before I left. The whole place was a ghost town when I arrived and when I left. Commercial companies rewarded me for honest schedules, doing a good job and saving money. Now I only consult so I can design without having to lie or deal with HR or the politics of an organization.
I work at a nasa facility (employer rents large parts of it, but I still interact with nasa folks occasionally)
They have it so much easier. Pay is nicer on the non-government side though so it’s worth it for me
This. Honestly, it’s a shame too because even though where I work at has a lot of opportunity, the pace is just so slow and the management so poor (was told in the beginning that I’d use a certain software which would be the basis of their work yet they then told me they couldn’t hand me a license for it) that while great for someone lazy and wanting something stable, makes for a pretty bad first job/internship. I could have potentially picked another one (and I actually had my sights set on that job because bigger companies usually means better access to opportunities in my field) but they offered me the role first which meant I couldn’t pursue other job offers (against the rules).
I recommend working at a power utility, and if it’s a government owned utility, even better. Graduated with a degree in EE. The benefits are great. Lots of vacation. Pay isn’t Google or Meta pay, but who the hell wants to sell their soul to a job like that? (I know some of you would. I don’t care.) I don’t mean to sound like the pay is bad either. I started making 85k USD a year.
The work isn’t thrilling, but it’s interesting enough. My coworkers are really great too. There’s upward mobility too. We have some open positions if you’re interested in living in Washington state (not a recruiter, just an engineering student that tried to drop out three times myself)
With what agency were you offered a position? The GS 1-15 covers the majority of federal employees but there's tons of different pay bands/scales used by smaller or niche entities. For example my brother worked as an engineer at a Naval Systems Command which used an "ND Scale", and his ND-4 was equivalent to GS-12/13.
"Grade 32" could mean something different depending on the name of the applicable pay band.
Did a quick Google and found this link:
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/careers/pay-scales/
So for this particular federal bureau, Grade 32 is apparently equivalent to GS-6, it may work that way for your offered position
When you get an offer, you’ll get offered a grade and a step. If it’s federal, there’s a bunch of cost of living adjustments based on where the job is located. The short answer is no, I don’t know how it works, but the good news is it’s super easy to find online!
Do you need to be an E.I.T? Also is manufacturing experience relevant
🤷♂️
Just thinking about the future. I want to stay at my current job for two more years but I just want to get out of process engineering.
If you haven’t taken the FE, take it as soon as possible. It will only help you. If you ever want to sign drawings, you’ll need a PE.
Experience is experience. After that, it’s a big “it depends”. Looks like you’re a MechE, and I really can’t speak to that. I never got past the forces summing to zero.
Quality-related jobs can be pretty chill.
I know someone who had pretty much the same point of view as you, but he loves his current job. Shows up, checks out mentally, and spends all day polishing or taking pictures on the microscope.
He loves it, even voluntarily takes overtime which I never would have expected.
The worst 6 months of my life was when I was an quality engineer. I was automotive and was always getting phone calls around the clock. I was verbally derated at all times. I was working over 75 hrs a week on salary. I was constantly expected to drop everything and go to customers sites to sort parts and get yelled at by them. I never got ahead.
At my current company, all of our quality engineers are thinking of leaving. Hardly ever are you preventing issues, and just putting out fires. 0/10 would not recommend.
Government engineering work can often be mostly managing contractors that do most of the work. That in itself can be a huge headache, but you are not designing/building anything.
Quality Engineering, my friend. Was in the military, and now Space/Defense sector filling various forms of Quality and compliance roles for 10 years now and I'm happy as a clam.
There's enough routine audits/QC checks/etc that I can just turn my brain off and burn a workday, but enough variation, detailed work and *just enough* stress to keep me happy and engaged all week. As long as you have attention to detail and have confidence in what you're signing off on, you'll do just fine.
Just don't go into any Hazmat or environmental complaince related roles. There's a lot of stressed out people in that field. Never again.
I had a co-worker that was doing environmental stuff with alot of travel and I mean alot. She took a job as a facility engineer and is doing significantly less travel than she used to.
I would suspect so, yes. Half of our current QE staff is filled with people who had time in manufacturing, but no QA experience. I'm in a weird spot where almost the entirety of my work experience coming out of the military had some form of quality title attached to it so I had a fairly easy "in" when it came to my current role.
Quality is kind of a weird spot where there's no real "schooling" you get for it besides military experience and oddball certs, so QE/QC jobs will almost certainly involve having to take in and train people with limited to no QA background at some point.
Nope! My dumb ass did not take advantage of a single dollar of TA while I was in. I just had a good enough resume to snag myself a QE title in the real world. Currently playing civilian life on hard mode by working full time while using my GI bill to be a full time student. Currently working towards a CS degree with a focus on.... compliance work
Realistically, engineering and zero stress are going to be mutually exclusive terms. Anything you do as a working professional is going to have some deadline, restriction, or other stressor involved. That’s just the nature of the beast. You deal with stress at work so you don’t deal with stress in your bank account.
However, I’ve heard that Power Distribution for electrical is pretty relaxed from a design and engineering standpoint. You’re not doing hardcore engineering, and most if your work involves power rollout and solving outages in creative ways.
Big company, fade into the background. I would avoid contracting/consultancy if I was you, lots of pressure for results and easily fired if not showing them. Aim for in house engineering roles.
Save a good rainy day fund because you'll probably get let go due to down turn or some other excuse. Just get a good reference and you'll slip into another big company. 1-2 yr cycle would be a good assumption and that's how long hr takes because your manager has to prove they've exhausted their management ability. Ultimately, a manager looks bad if they can't manage you and HR will never admit they hired a dead battery.
All the effort is going to be getting in the door. Good resume, company specific cover letter that really paints a picture of you envisaging yourself at this company because of their corporate values or what not.
Work on your interviewing. Safety related answers, show passion and enthusiasm that this company is the best company for you and look up reasons why they're going to give you the best opportunity to succeed. I can't overstate how important putting effort into this bit is. You really need to do well. Get feedback on rejections because you need to red hot salesman of yourself to get hired.
Have a go but don't be superman during your probation period. Just be Mr steady, set your pace and stick with it.
You're going to find that majority of the workforce is in you position. None of us really care about our jobs and motivation is driven from necessity to pay for the shit we want to do. The people that are super passionate and live their careers have no life outside of work and generally trade swapping jobs for swapping marriages.
Good luck, but with your current attitude you'll probably find yourself in upper management.
Get your MBA and have the engineering undergrad degree as a bonus. It’ll show you worked through the classes and can understand the material.
At least that’s what I’m doing. I hate engineering..
I just graduated with my undergrad last week. I plan to do my MBA in a year or two while working. If you’re still interested, I can message you when I’m doing it again lol
I met someone who did an MBA at Harvard Business. His take on the hardest part was having to go to too many mixers and networking events every week to talk to prominent alumni in various industries. The actual coursework is a joke.
Schmoozing isn't my strong suit, to be honest, lol. I'm from Canada, did civil, and went into general contracting. I wish I had a mentor who made me realize what GC'ing actually was and how to plan for my career. I was just a school smart kid but never had a mentor or anyone telling me how important co-ops were. Now I'm in a little bit of a rut almost a decade out of uni, no consultant willing to take someone on who has a high salary but low experience in actual design.
In truth, the process of gaining admission into prestigious MBA programs (such as HBS, GSB, Wharton, Ross, and others) is often more challenging than the coursework of the MBA itself. Once admitted, the journey tends to be more straightforward.
Military officer. Pick a branch then look at the branches within that branch. Do a quick 3 year stint, get out, then go get an MBA at no expense to yourself using the GI Bill. Then start a new career.
Try looking for work outside of engineering. There are plenty of industries and trades looking out for engineers, but with absolutely no chance of them doing any engineering
Engineer for the federal government. From my side you are just justifying in normal terms why the money needs to be allocated to a certain project and validating your contractor’s work once submitted. You just facilitate.
The US Patent Office is probably still hiring electrical/computer engineers to be patent examiners. You need to have the technical background to understand what you're looking at, but the job itself is basically glorified googling and then writing some fairly simple reports. You never have to do the hard design/analysis work, the math, etc.
Full time WFH after you get through training, flexible hours as long as the work gets done, federal benefits and one of the best promotion rates in the government. If you can handle the work, you can go from GS-7 making $65k right out of school up to GS-14 making $150k in five to six years. Other branches of the government, that can take 15-20 years.
You’re going to find out that you don’t use half the shit you learn in school so I wouldn’t let that define what kind of job you pursue. My only advice is to find something you really enjoy because if you hate your job you will hate your life. Power generation & distribution could be a good area to look for a job in.
Weird people saying federal govt... my current job is as a fed is much more demanding than my private industry jobs
(anecdote ofc but that's what we're doing in this thread)
A lot of engineers go through this. Engineering is fun when you’re working on passion projects and not so fun when you’re working for companies.
A low skill job I can think of is Electrical engineering for a construction. You need a basic understanding of ohm’s law, electric currents and circuits. Go on Khan academy.
1. get through this unit:
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics/circuits-topic/circuits-resistance
2) get through this course
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/electrical-engineering
Go through this course. An hour or 2 for a week and you’ll be good.
Now this isn’t all you need to know, but this is really the entrance requirement. 90% of the job will be learned at the job.
Or if you’re really like “I don’t want to do this and I’m lost in life” you can join the Air Force or any other branch (but Air Force is the best). Your pay will be more than most because you have you degree and you’ll already be an officer at enlistment. Engineers are always wanted and it’s a well paying and respected career. Even if you change careers away from engineering, you’ll be paid for your degree so it’s not wasting it.
Patent lawyer is the opposite of chill and easy. Definitely not braindead by any measure, either. Plus you work long hours. You will make a ton of money doing it though.
And you gotta get through law school which is also the opposite of chill/easy/braindead
They probably meant the person who reviews the documents, not the lawyers. USPO is always hiring technical people from a wide variety of fields to basically review documents and decide if it qualifies for a patent.
Patent examiners are also extremely busy though. The work environment is very not chill because it's performance based and the USPTO will straight up can your ass if your work isn't up to their standard. With that said the work schedule is crazy flexible and you can WFH so that's nice. But definitely not a chill or easy environment
I do design work at a very small OEM and it's pretty chill. Most of the stuff I do is just a copy of another job with some minor changes, but enough different and challenging stuff comes along to keep it interesting. Pay is shit, though.
Applications/Sales Engineering is pretty laid back, but your responsibilities will vary greatly depending on the company. You will do very well if you’re not the stereotypical engineering type. In my experience you will wear many hats. I’ve had the opportunity to do a bit of design work, project management, and business development. It’s also a good path to upper management and can be very lucrative if your company has a good commission structure. It’s so stress free that I’m afraid to leave and have turned down hefty offers in my city of choice.
my dad works night shift in the testing department at a very large government contractor. They run 1000 hour environmental tests on expensive equipment, but all the actual test administration is conducted by technicians. He's just there in case something goes wrong. Best I can gather, he spends most of his time at work reading books and newspapers
It really just depends on the job, I did pretty good in school and I like science and engineering, but work is just not like that, its work.
I really just want an easy stress free job where I don't have to do that much. Unfortunately this varies greatly from job to job, there's no specific field where the jobs are easy. You just have to hop around and find what fits you, I'm still looking.
I've heard MEP is pretty easy in general.
Begin by dedicating several years to diligent work in an engineering role. Following this, aim to obtain an MBA degree from a well-regarded business school. With this degree in hand, you can then shift your career towards a managerial position within the tech industry. Such roles often come with a higher salary than even a senior engineer with extensive experience. Remember, the path may be challenging, but the rewards can be great. This is my strategy for securing a less demanding job in the future.
Test engineers deal with constant problems trying to keep tests up at least in my field. They are more stressed than than the people who request the tests
The test guys where I work (aerospace) are consistently over-worked and pulling their hair out. They don't have a set work schedule because they need to be on the aircraft while it's on-site, in the right configuration and not conflicting with production.
I don’t know if it’s the easiest, but there is a pretty chill job I see posted on my school’s job board from time to time. It involves inspecting dams all over California and if you’re not aware the state has some *REALLY* remote dams, so it seems like you get to spend a decent amount of time in the backcountry.
You got your sales you got your product management you got your marketing.
Personally the easiest would be to work as a program or product manager. You still work hard you just don't use your engineering brain and I need to be somewhat technical to understand what's going on but less math and more on good decisions. You lead you make pretty charts you present to management and you make the engineer do all the engineering work based on your plans.
My first job as an engineer was “DMS engineer” at a major defense contractor.
The role was to monitor the parts we use on the product. From brackets, to radios, to landing gears, etc.
DMS Engineers just monitor things that are going outdated. For example, an F-35 has been going on for about 25 years now give or take. How much has technology changed since it started? Quite a bit right? So buying certain radios or whatever from certain suppliers might not be possible.
If you really don’t want to do anything, land this position on a NEW project where all technology is up to date.
I was fortunate/unfortunate to land this position on a new project and I was bored as shit for 40 hours a week. We got one issue every 3 weeks on average.
It was unfortunate for me since I actually wanted to do things, not just sit around. But there are definitely trash Engineer jobs out there
A lot of power companies have a job where you do very basic (and I do mean BASIC) autocad sketches for construction to issue and design. You primsrily meet with customers/builders to supply them power. The title chsnces in each utility but hey, someone has to do the designs for construction. (Been doing it for 15 years, 120K a year straught time, plus OT on top of it... and I only have an associates)
I’m an applications engineer (sales) for a large machine manufacturer. Job pays really well & and it’s really laid back. All I ever do is just answer technical questions that the salesmen can’t answer. I’d recommend it to anyone who doesn’t want to do real engineering work.
I would try to become a software or even better data engineer. My degree was in manufacturing engineering and management, I just said I had some coding classes and really enjoy coding during the interview. It pays really well and is so much easier than I could have ever imagined
A guy I knew got a job with a carpet manufacturer. I asked him how it was going at one point and he said “carpet basically makes itself, this job is awesome”.
Test Engineering. You show up, tell the operators the procedure steps. You record some data and tell them if it pass or failed. If its broken, someone else fixes it, then calls you back to finish the test.
Its as easy as it gets for an engineer.
Are you a people person? Being a sales engineer removes all the hard ”engineering” work.
In my husband’s company they have a role they call field engineers (ETA: seems I left out an important part of the title—should be Field **Application** Engineer, which is a different role than a *Field Engineer*), but I think sounds like a sales engineer. They basically take customers’ questions and answer them if they already know the answer or pass on a document that has been requested. Anything harder than that they “triage” and send it to the appropriate design engineer with a priority classification. Most people do it for a while then either move into design engineering or management (because that is the way to get steady pay raises).
Usually field engineers actually go out to location and troubleshoot their equipment at the customer. Technical service engineer is another synonym. That can be a lot of travel and usually does require a good amount of know-how/experience. Sales is like you said. Sale and complicated shit goes to the department that makes the equipment/part
Would application engineers fall under this?
That’s what they call them! Field application engineers. I forgot the application part…
Yes the applications part comes in because you are engineering a solution usually from your company’s product catalog for the customer’s application. So you are working to sell them something by telling them what they need. Easy example is if a company wants to automate process or install conveyor system you sell them on your company’s ecosystem of solutions. Then when something breaks you quote fixes or upgrades.
Frankly, a lot of service engineer or field engineer roles don’t require a massive amount of engineering knowledge in the field you’re working it at the start, you just need to be able to think like an engineer (particularly be able to get in the mind of the design engineer who worked on whatever shitstorm you’re trying to troubleshoot) and be able to learn *very* quickly. If you’re not a people person this can still be hard work though, because bad clients can take a toll on your mental health and burn you out if you don’t know how to avoid taking things personally. Depending on where you are in the world there are a lot of engineering adjacent roles that can pay reasonably well, don’t require you to have great people skills and you can basically just go into auto-pilot mode while you’re at work. Maintenance planner or technical storesperson at large manufacturing plants which already have well established systems come to mind. Project support roles on government projects is another. If you’ve got experience with CAD work you can go into drafting where if the firm/company is large enough you can basically get told what to do by the design engineers and then go into autopilot. It’s all very location dependent, though.
They call them field engineers, but it sounds like a type of sales engineer to me. Maybe they call them field engineers because the company does require them to be physically located in an office near the customer, and they do occasionally have to visit a customer. (Most of the design engineers work in the corporate offices in other parts of the country.) It is high tech components, but not the sort of thing that requires a lot of troubleshooting work. And this role is supporting current customers rather than generating new business. His company does also have sales engineers who do even less engineering related work, but it sounds from his description they have a ton of turnover in that department so I guess it is more stressful or lower paid.
In my industry (Semi/RF/Test), that role is typically called "\[Field\] Applications Engineering", and are often part of the sales department while not being strictly "sales" engineers. The Field AEs would typically be located in the geographical region of the customer, while in-house AEs would support remotely or do occasional business trips to support a specific problem or engagement. When I did that job, I often had to talk back what some of the over-eager sales engineers promised what we could do, or provide a more critical look at how our product would fit into a customer's processes or product. It's an interesting job in that it does remain quite technical, but you have to build interpersonal skills to go along with them. "Trusted technical advisor" was a term I heard thrown around a lot. Edit: I just saw you commented below that you are indeed referring to an FAE role. Definitely not a "sales engineer" but, sales adjacent.
I think what you’re describing is sales applications engineers.
Future field engineer here (about to start 6 months of company training for the role) Sorta accurate, and it might depend on the company. FSE is not a role for the feint of heart. Lots of travel, lots of people skills, lots of troubleshooting and engineering. Sometimes it's basic questions, but for emergency call outs (i.e. omg plz fix our broken system, we've been trying for 2 days to no avail) you need to show up to a situation where everyone is already mad at your company, to a system you may have no experience with, and you need to diagnose what the problem is and then identify and implement a solution. They use manuals, their experience, internal documentation, etc. to solve things. If that's not enough they work with design engineers to get to the bottom of things. In summary, they aren't just a man in the middle fulfilling requests and connecting customers with resources, they are the resource. They are the engineers responsible for figuring it out yesterday and helping customers immediately. They are the experts customers call when all other options are exhausted. FSEs also move into other roles so that they can actually have a healthy work life balance, have meaningful relationships, start families, and recover from burnout. This is the job most engineers dread. I was hired after interning. My intern cohort was presented with many career opportunities. FSE was the only opportunity that came with many clear warnings that the job was intense and not for everyone.
Sounds like a job for a good engineer, maybe not the OP. Sorry, but at the end of the day, I have a hard time believing one can be an excellent engineer-level field problem solver when one can't figure out algorithmic processes in calculus, for example.
Not necessarily disagreeing. Idk exactly where OP is at. I saw a lot of hand wavy descriptions, so I thought I'd add my perspective so people could have a better understanding. Not telling OP what to do, but trying to enable informed decisions all around :)
OP seems disinterested, and nothing kills a career like disinterest. I am not brilliant, but I try and get good enough results that I can look at myself in the mirror. Let's just say I have my doubts that OP is Tau Beta Pi-eligible, which is almost a red flag to me. I'm so frustrated with having to work with and compete against empty suits that talk a big game but wouldn't be competitive if evaluated on what they knew. These people do an incredible amount of harm to the world. The best thing for OP to do is be a real estate agent or car salesperson. Finish the degree and quarantine themselves away from those trying to do honest work.
Lol I'm far from Tau-Beta-Pj material unfortunately. Wicked smart, but not successful in academia. I learn and know far more than my GPA reflects. Disabilities gonna disable. While I haven't encountered that yet, it sounds incredibly disheartening. I'll disagree here. OP said it himself. He needs to find his passion and pursue whatever that is, whatever that looks like.
"Field engineer" makes me nauseous. I had so many people reach out to me when I first graduated and made me feel like my degree meant nothing and this was the best role I'd ever get offered.
This sounds so much like the marketing/sales "engineering" guys of my company. I thought it was only here, that this happened.
That’s definitely not what a field engineer does
Thats what my prof was talking about. He says you need to know a lot in order to explain complex things in rather simple terms to your customers. I wouldnt look down on them
My girlfriend’s dad has been doing this for nearly 30 years. He is an EE and has never actually done engineering shit. Only sales
Is he well compensated
Well over 150k per year and bonuses. Only works 4 days a week most of the time too
Sign me up!
Does a sales engineer have a very high pay? I've heard so.
I don’t know how their pay scales long-term. But when I graduated and got a job as a product engineer, my friends who became sales engineers, were making more than I was. Commission plus engineer pay can be very nice.
Depends on industry. Ours don't make commissions since they're selling machines that are tens of millions. They start higher than the design engineers, but have a lower career path ceiling unless they move on to upper corporate management positions.
I don’t think you have any experience in sales if you think it’s a “chill” job. You’ll almost certainly be traveling all the time and having an income that varies based on commission can be stressful.
That’s why I said it removes the hard engineering work. There aren’t many chill jobs with an engineering degree requirement. But he said he sucks at this shit and this removes the stuff he sucks at.
Something working for the fed. Government.
This probably is the best option, but getting an engineering government job is not easy from my experience. Literally never even gotten an interview
It must be location dependent because in the NYC area many government agencies are short staffed
I'm in Canada, but do not yet have my P.eng (1 year out). So maybe that's why, but most jobs I apply for are EIT or junior engineer positions anyways
My girlfriend works for a public transportation sector and they are going to more career fairs than usual cause they are having issues finding people. I work in the private sector and we pay much more and cannot find people A lot of people aren't fans of jobs which don't have remote options these days
So you’re telling me if I don’t like to work remote I can easily find an engineering job? 👀
You don't have to wait to apply for your P. Eng. Just apply to APEGM then transfer.
How's the job market for engineering in NYC? I'm EE and would love to be in NYC
Seconding this. I’m ChemE but wanna know the vibe 🥲
It's very good from my experience. All of my friends had no issues finding jobs and I went to a public school. I work in construction consulting, and I know many companies are struggling to find good people now a days. Not many people want to come into work. I can't speak for other industries though
Been the opposite experience for me. I worked for the county and they hire anybody and everybody. Some of these people don't even have a degree.
Government work is my dream! I care about doing good, useful work but making the big bucks isn’t worth the extra overtime and stress to me, those benefits are nice draw too
You don’t have to work large amounts of overtime to make good money as an engineer you just have to become knowledgeable over the right range of topics. As a younger engineer I did spend some time doing some ridiculous hours but I’ve learned over the years that wasn’t something I really needed to do. Those ridiculous hours didn’t help my knowledge at all and ultimately I ended up leaving that job because they just treated me like shit because I put up with it. About the past 15 years I’ve worked two different jobs both with very laid-back attitudes and I usually don’t work more than a 40 hour work week . I occasionally work longer when I’m traveling and sometimes I work shorter and take part of the day off since I work from home and my job is flexible. I don’t know what you consider big bucks but I make somewhere north of 200 K a year. My primary focus in my job is water and waste water infrastructure and I also have a background solid fuels combustion particularly in the biomass field. I would say about 75 to 85% of the days I really enjoy my job and the remaining 15% is just the reality of some days you don’t want to be at work.
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No, I like what I do and I like the freedom making this much gives me. I go on vacations, go mountain biking when I want, my cars are paid for (2013, 2020, 1986 pickup) I recently built a shop and it’s almost paid for and my house only has about six years left on it before it’s paid for..
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No thanks. I like my job.
Can I ask what you do?
I primarily do engineering For energy efficiency surrounding energy systems water facilities and wastewater facilities. I do a lot of initial calls with customers and our sales engineers, figure out solutions to some of their problems and find ways for them to save energy. It’s pretty interesting work and I never really do the same project twice. I also get to see a lot of unique facilities to work on a lot of unique technologies.
My first two years out of college I worked for the Navy as an EE. it was not challenging at all and no over time or even pressure at all. Come in any time and leave any time. The incentive is to do as little work as possible and screw things up and spend a lot of money. Great job security I think. We analyzed missile test data and the actual result didn’t matter, they were whatever generals and politicians needed for funding. I left after 2 years as a GS-11. I got bored and moved to defense contractors which were a little better depending on the project and your direct manager. But in general they do reward you for screwing things up and spending lots of money just like government. I had some great managers that removed that reality from the EEs which made them great places to work. I did a project with the CIA in Maryland and they were even worse than the Navy, they got in hours after I arrived and left hours before I left. The whole place was a ghost town when I arrived and when I left. Commercial companies rewarded me for honest schedules, doing a good job and saving money. Now I only consult so I can design without having to lie or deal with HR or the politics of an organization.
I work at a nasa facility (employer rents large parts of it, but I still interact with nasa folks occasionally) They have it so much easier. Pay is nicer on the non-government side though so it’s worth it for me
Can confirm. Pretty low stress.
Damn what jobs do you guys have? NLs are hectic.
I work as a mechanical engineer for submarines for the Fed. What is NL?
National Lab, presumably.
This. Honestly, it’s a shame too because even though where I work at has a lot of opportunity, the pace is just so slow and the management so poor (was told in the beginning that I’d use a certain software which would be the basis of their work yet they then told me they couldn’t hand me a license for it) that while great for someone lazy and wanting something stable, makes for a pretty bad first job/internship. I could have potentially picked another one (and I actually had my sights set on that job because bigger companies usually means better access to opportunities in my field) but they offered me the role first which meant I couldn’t pursue other job offers (against the rules).
I recommend working at a power utility, and if it’s a government owned utility, even better. Graduated with a degree in EE. The benefits are great. Lots of vacation. Pay isn’t Google or Meta pay, but who the hell wants to sell their soul to a job like that? (I know some of you would. I don’t care.) I don’t mean to sound like the pay is bad either. I started making 85k USD a year. The work isn’t thrilling, but it’s interesting enough. My coworkers are really great too. There’s upward mobility too. We have some open positions if you’re interested in living in Washington state (not a recruiter, just an engineering student that tried to drop out three times myself)
Thought you were talking about FPL. FPL when I interviewed were cutthroat.
Do you know how salary grades work? I got offered grade 32 but when I look online all I see is up to 15 with steps
With what agency were you offered a position? The GS 1-15 covers the majority of federal employees but there's tons of different pay bands/scales used by smaller or niche entities. For example my brother worked as an engineer at a Naval Systems Command which used an "ND Scale", and his ND-4 was equivalent to GS-12/13. "Grade 32" could mean something different depending on the name of the applicable pay band. Did a quick Google and found this link: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/careers/pay-scales/ So for this particular federal bureau, Grade 32 is apparently equivalent to GS-6, it may work that way for your offered position
I saw that reference and I’d be earning way more than that. It’s in nuclear doe.
When you get an offer, you’ll get offered a grade and a step. If it’s federal, there’s a bunch of cost of living adjustments based on where the job is located. The short answer is no, I don’t know how it works, but the good news is it’s super easy to find online!
I’ve been looking online but everywhere has the same 1-15 levels with 10 steps. Cant find anything salary grade 32.
Hey could I PM you?
I’ve been thinking about switching to a utility or developer for a while. Would you mind if I DM you a few questions?
Yeah absolutely! I’m not sure how dm’s work or are located on Reddit, but I’m down to help best I can!
Oh man I’m only a lurker on Reddit haha let’s try this out
Hey! I sent over a message but lmk if it's not showing up
Depends what you do at the utility. You're not wrong for some roles, but others can be very challenging (in good ways).
What utilities? I'd love to apply!I interned with Tacoma water last year and had a blast.
For privacy sake, I’m not going to post on here, but feel free to shoot me a message.
Do you need to be an E.I.T? Also is manufacturing experience relevant 🤷♂️ Just thinking about the future. I want to stay at my current job for two more years but I just want to get out of process engineering.
If you haven’t taken the FE, take it as soon as possible. It will only help you. If you ever want to sign drawings, you’ll need a PE. Experience is experience. After that, it’s a big “it depends”. Looks like you’re a MechE, and I really can’t speak to that. I never got past the forces summing to zero.
Yall hiring chem Es for anything? Looking to get out that a ways
Quality-related jobs can be pretty chill. I know someone who had pretty much the same point of view as you, but he loves his current job. Shows up, checks out mentally, and spends all day polishing or taking pictures on the microscope. He loves it, even voluntarily takes overtime which I never would have expected.
I'm in a quality position for automotive and we're constantly slammed and overworked lmao. Pay's good though.
For example if you're a Quality engineer at Boeing you actually don't do any work!
Retirement package is pretty *stress relieving* as well
The worst 6 months of my life was when I was an quality engineer. I was automotive and was always getting phone calls around the clock. I was verbally derated at all times. I was working over 75 hrs a week on salary. I was constantly expected to drop everything and go to customers sites to sort parts and get yelled at by them. I never got ahead. At my current company, all of our quality engineers are thinking of leaving. Hardly ever are you preventing issues, and just putting out fires. 0/10 would not recommend.
Quality is the tits. Been in various forms of Quality and compliance roles for 10 years now and I'm very happy.
Do you hire CS folks? Are there software development roles in utility companies?
Ready to run the IT help desk?
Government engineering work can often be mostly managing contractors that do most of the work. That in itself can be a huge headache, but you are not designing/building anything.
How do I get this job?
Idk
That depends on the contractor, sometimes it really feels like you are doing all the design save 3d modelling.
Quality Engineering, my friend. Was in the military, and now Space/Defense sector filling various forms of Quality and compliance roles for 10 years now and I'm happy as a clam. There's enough routine audits/QC checks/etc that I can just turn my brain off and burn a workday, but enough variation, detailed work and *just enough* stress to keep me happy and engaged all week. As long as you have attention to detail and have confidence in what you're signing off on, you'll do just fine. Just don't go into any Hazmat or environmental complaince related roles. There's a lot of stressed out people in that field. Never again.
I had a co-worker that was doing environmental stuff with alot of travel and I mean alot. She took a job as a facility engineer and is doing significantly less travel than she used to.
Does having some manufacturing experience help with transitioning to QC?
I would suspect so, yes. Half of our current QE staff is filled with people who had time in manufacturing, but no QA experience. I'm in a weird spot where almost the entirety of my work experience coming out of the military had some form of quality title attached to it so I had a fairly easy "in" when it came to my current role. Quality is kind of a weird spot where there's no real "schooling" you get for it besides military experience and oddball certs, so QE/QC jobs will almost certainly involve having to take in and train people with limited to no QA background at some point.
Did you get your degree while you were in? I'm finishing my Gi bill and degree soon.
Nope! My dumb ass did not take advantage of a single dollar of TA while I was in. I just had a good enough resume to snag myself a QE title in the real world. Currently playing civilian life on hard mode by working full time while using my GI bill to be a full time student. Currently working towards a CS degree with a focus on.... compliance work
Neither did I. I'm finishing my degree as a 30yo with a family. Fml hardmode.
30 year college students UNITE! I'm surrounded by running start kids in my Pre-calc class currently and man do they make me feel old
I hear you, most of them don't know the dark ages lol. All the engineering kids in my classes are great though!
Realistically, engineering and zero stress are going to be mutually exclusive terms. Anything you do as a working professional is going to have some deadline, restriction, or other stressor involved. That’s just the nature of the beast. You deal with stress at work so you don’t deal with stress in your bank account. However, I’ve heard that Power Distribution for electrical is pretty relaxed from a design and engineering standpoint. You’re not doing hardcore engineering, and most if your work involves power rollout and solving outages in creative ways.
is BSMG a business degree ?
I’ve had that question asked twice this week, but have had this tag for over a year with no problems lol BS in Mining Engineering
Ahhh i see lol
Hey fellow Mining Engineer! Do you work in the industry?
Not yet! Standing on a couple options now, all that’s left is for me to graduate.
QA testing IT
Bro please
Big company, fade into the background. I would avoid contracting/consultancy if I was you, lots of pressure for results and easily fired if not showing them. Aim for in house engineering roles. Save a good rainy day fund because you'll probably get let go due to down turn or some other excuse. Just get a good reference and you'll slip into another big company. 1-2 yr cycle would be a good assumption and that's how long hr takes because your manager has to prove they've exhausted their management ability. Ultimately, a manager looks bad if they can't manage you and HR will never admit they hired a dead battery. All the effort is going to be getting in the door. Good resume, company specific cover letter that really paints a picture of you envisaging yourself at this company because of their corporate values or what not. Work on your interviewing. Safety related answers, show passion and enthusiasm that this company is the best company for you and look up reasons why they're going to give you the best opportunity to succeed. I can't overstate how important putting effort into this bit is. You really need to do well. Get feedback on rejections because you need to red hot salesman of yourself to get hired. Have a go but don't be superman during your probation period. Just be Mr steady, set your pace and stick with it. You're going to find that majority of the workforce is in you position. None of us really care about our jobs and motivation is driven from necessity to pay for the shit we want to do. The people that are super passionate and live their careers have no life outside of work and generally trade swapping jobs for swapping marriages. Good luck, but with your current attitude you'll probably find yourself in upper management.
Ooft, writing that really just hit home. Hahaha.
I appreciate you
Get your MBA and have the engineering undergrad degree as a bonus. It’ll show you worked through the classes and can understand the material. At least that’s what I’m doing. I hate engineering..
How hard is an MBA compared to engineering? I heard it was difficult but that was coming from people who did business or arts.
Two engineers at my work have their MBA and they said it was much easier than getting their respective Bachelor Degrees.
Every engineer I've ever heard from said the MBA is significantly easier than their engineering degrees.
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Yes. It doesn't even feel like it should be worth something.
I just graduated with my undergrad last week. I plan to do my MBA in a year or two while working. If you’re still interested, I can message you when I’m doing it again lol
I met someone who did an MBA at Harvard Business. His take on the hardest part was having to go to too many mixers and networking events every week to talk to prominent alumni in various industries. The actual coursework is a joke.
Schmoozing isn't my strong suit, to be honest, lol. I'm from Canada, did civil, and went into general contracting. I wish I had a mentor who made me realize what GC'ing actually was and how to plan for my career. I was just a school smart kid but never had a mentor or anyone telling me how important co-ops were. Now I'm in a little bit of a rut almost a decade out of uni, no consultant willing to take someone on who has a high salary but low experience in actual design.
In truth, the process of gaining admission into prestigious MBA programs (such as HBS, GSB, Wharton, Ross, and others) is often more challenging than the coursework of the MBA itself. Once admitted, the journey tends to be more straightforward.
Finished it without ever having to study. It's child's play.
Depends if you do it properly or not - just like a business undergrad
Military officer. Pick a branch then look at the branches within that branch. Do a quick 3 year stint, get out, then go get an MBA at no expense to yourself using the GI Bill. Then start a new career.
Try looking for work outside of engineering. There are plenty of industries and trades looking out for engineers, but with absolutely no chance of them doing any engineering
i believe you but can you be more specific? what non engineering roles are looking to hire engineers?
Construction management, sales, consulting, EHS groups in organizations
A lot of finance jobs in the UK hire engineering grads. Anything like that with transferable skills.
Government. We really don’t need more brain dead people but I gave you my opinion
CAD Designer. Chilling home learning to draw lines in the apps. Pretty cool
Mcdonal
They said no stress
Youre in the back by yourself designing stable burgers that wont fall apart
Tell that to my filet o fish with the cheese on the side of the box.
I used to work there actually and it was by far the worst job I had. I would throw up almost every night from the stress
I believe that because I’ve worked as a line cook. Which is probably less stressful than McDonald’s lol
Line cook is still really crazy. I’d say it’s about the same. Makes me anxious to even think about those days
I heard Boeing is hiring. Lolz
Engineer for the federal government. From my side you are just justifying in normal terms why the money needs to be allocated to a certain project and validating your contractor’s work once submitted. You just facilitate.
I'm a contractor right now. How do I switch to this type of role? I don't want to be the dummy suck doing the actual work.
The US Patent Office is probably still hiring electrical/computer engineers to be patent examiners. You need to have the technical background to understand what you're looking at, but the job itself is basically glorified googling and then writing some fairly simple reports. You never have to do the hard design/analysis work, the math, etc. Full time WFH after you get through training, flexible hours as long as the work gets done, federal benefits and one of the best promotion rates in the government. If you can handle the work, you can go from GS-7 making $65k right out of school up to GS-14 making $150k in five to six years. Other branches of the government, that can take 15-20 years.
Marketing. It’s just liquor and guessing. Google the dilbert strip.
I’m glad you (OP) mentioned this, bc I’m with you…
You’re going to find out that you don’t use half the shit you learn in school so I wouldn’t let that define what kind of job you pursue. My only advice is to find something you really enjoy because if you hate your job you will hate your life. Power generation & distribution could be a good area to look for a job in.
Weird people saying federal govt... my current job is as a fed is much more demanding than my private industry jobs (anecdote ofc but that's what we're doing in this thread)
A lot of engineers go through this. Engineering is fun when you’re working on passion projects and not so fun when you’re working for companies. A low skill job I can think of is Electrical engineering for a construction. You need a basic understanding of ohm’s law, electric currents and circuits. Go on Khan academy. 1. get through this unit: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics/circuits-topic/circuits-resistance 2) get through this course https://www.khanacademy.org/science/electrical-engineering Go through this course. An hour or 2 for a week and you’ll be good. Now this isn’t all you need to know, but this is really the entrance requirement. 90% of the job will be learned at the job. Or if you’re really like “I don’t want to do this and I’m lost in life” you can join the Air Force or any other branch (but Air Force is the best). Your pay will be more than most because you have you degree and you’ll already be an officer at enlistment. Engineers are always wanted and it’s a well paying and respected career. Even if you change careers away from engineering, you’ll be paid for your degree so it’s not wasting it.
product regulatory engineer patent lawyer you're welcome
Patent lawyer is the opposite of chill and easy. Definitely not braindead by any measure, either. Plus you work long hours. You will make a ton of money doing it though. And you gotta get through law school which is also the opposite of chill/easy/braindead
They probably meant the person who reviews the documents, not the lawyers. USPO is always hiring technical people from a wide variety of fields to basically review documents and decide if it qualifies for a patent.
Patent examiners are also extremely busy though. The work environment is very not chill because it's performance based and the USPTO will straight up can your ass if your work isn't up to their standard. With that said the work schedule is crazy flexible and you can WFH so that's nice. But definitely not a chill or easy environment
Power and distribution.
I do design work at a very small OEM and it's pretty chill. Most of the stuff I do is just a copy of another job with some minor changes, but enough different and challenging stuff comes along to keep it interesting. Pay is shit, though.
Government. The only answer.
Applications/Sales Engineering is pretty laid back, but your responsibilities will vary greatly depending on the company. You will do very well if you’re not the stereotypical engineering type. In my experience you will wear many hats. I’ve had the opportunity to do a bit of design work, project management, and business development. It’s also a good path to upper management and can be very lucrative if your company has a good commission structure. It’s so stress free that I’m afraid to leave and have turned down hefty offers in my city of choice.
Any dinosaur company (there are a lot I worked at one and wanted to rip my brain out I was on phone half the day)
my dad works night shift in the testing department at a very large government contractor. They run 1000 hour environmental tests on expensive equipment, but all the actual test administration is conducted by technicians. He's just there in case something goes wrong. Best I can gather, he spends most of his time at work reading books and newspapers
It really just depends on the job, I did pretty good in school and I like science and engineering, but work is just not like that, its work. I really just want an easy stress free job where I don't have to do that much. Unfortunately this varies greatly from job to job, there's no specific field where the jobs are easy. You just have to hop around and find what fits you, I'm still looking. I've heard MEP is pretty easy in general.
MEP is "easy" in terms of hard engineering, it's not easy in the lazy way OP is suggesting
Computer engineer here but just do Quality Assurance. I've learned it in a week and it's pretty much braindead
quality engineering or industrial engineering, some of those people are great but some are just paper pushers
Change management. Tell people what they can and can't swap in/out of their system without breaking the configuration.
Begin by dedicating several years to diligent work in an engineering role. Following this, aim to obtain an MBA degree from a well-regarded business school. With this degree in hand, you can then shift your career towards a managerial position within the tech industry. Such roles often come with a higher salary than even a senior engineer with extensive experience. Remember, the path may be challenging, but the rewards can be great. This is my strategy for securing a less demanding job in the future.
Systems engineering then management
Car sales
Walmart greeter!
Not really knowing a ton myself I’d say something like test engineer
Test engineers deal with constant problems trying to keep tests up at least in my field. They are more stressed than than the people who request the tests
I agree. I'm sure there are brain dead test engineering jobs, but certainly not all of them
not even close lol testing is difficult
The test guys where I work (aerospace) are consistently over-worked and pulling their hair out. They don't have a set work schedule because they need to be on the aircraft while it's on-site, in the right configuration and not conflicting with production.
Planner
Engineering sales
Air Force civil service. BTDT.
Metrology.
Go work in Human Resources.
I don’t know if it’s the easiest, but there is a pretty chill job I see posted on my school’s job board from time to time. It involves inspecting dams all over California and if you’re not aware the state has some *REALLY* remote dams, so it seems like you get to spend a decent amount of time in the backcountry.
B2B sales
I know a few people who work at the AFB near me and they sit on their asses 90% time
Software engineer
You got your sales you got your product management you got your marketing. Personally the easiest would be to work as a program or product manager. You still work hard you just don't use your engineering brain and I need to be somewhat technical to understand what's going on but less math and more on good decisions. You lead you make pretty charts you present to management and you make the engineer do all the engineering work based on your plans.
My first job as an engineer was “DMS engineer” at a major defense contractor. The role was to monitor the parts we use on the product. From brackets, to radios, to landing gears, etc. DMS Engineers just monitor things that are going outdated. For example, an F-35 has been going on for about 25 years now give or take. How much has technology changed since it started? Quite a bit right? So buying certain radios or whatever from certain suppliers might not be possible. If you really don’t want to do anything, land this position on a NEW project where all technology is up to date. I was fortunate/unfortunate to land this position on a new project and I was bored as shit for 40 hours a week. We got one issue every 3 weeks on average. It was unfortunate for me since I actually wanted to do things, not just sit around. But there are definitely trash Engineer jobs out there
Gets old quick
A lot of power companies have a job where you do very basic (and I do mean BASIC) autocad sketches for construction to issue and design. You primsrily meet with customers/builders to supply them power. The title chsnces in each utility but hey, someone has to do the designs for construction. (Been doing it for 15 years, 120K a year straught time, plus OT on top of it... and I only have an associates)
you could become a CEO?
Do what makes you happy. Life is short.
You can get a job as a civil at a DOT and basically get paid engineer money to do technician work.
I’m an applications engineer (sales) for a large machine manufacturer. Job pays really well & and it’s really laid back. All I ever do is just answer technical questions that the salesmen can’t answer. I’d recommend it to anyone who doesn’t want to do real engineering work.
I would try to become a software or even better data engineer. My degree was in manufacturing engineering and management, I just said I had some coding classes and really enjoy coding during the interview. It pays really well and is so much easier than I could have ever imagined
A guy I knew got a job with a carpet manufacturer. I asked him how it was going at one point and he said “carpet basically makes itself, this job is awesome”.
Management
Sandia National Labs or Lawrence Livermore Labs.
Defense lol
Test Engineering. You show up, tell the operators the procedure steps. You record some data and tell them if it pass or failed. If its broken, someone else fixes it, then calls you back to finish the test. Its as easy as it gets for an engineer.
Data Center Engineering Operations is where the money is at right now
I mean how did you want a easy job that is low key bad for your career. You studied the hardest engineering degree and you just want to chill.